here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my country you sir are a fool you know what that is my terror cells but i don't want to listen to feature stories on the on the liberal and the christian public. can relate to.

what's going on over on i'm abby martin well well well the first presidential debate is a thing of the past and what have we learned take away men's i'm sorry jim i'm going to stop the subsidy to p.b.s. i'm going to stop all the things i like p.b.s. i love big bird i actually like you too. that's right mitt romney considers p.b.s. and big bird a non-essential item in the budget but guess what big bird's parody twitter was watching and he had some words for the republican presidential nominee and so first big bird was like w.t.f. mitt romney's sad face and then he brought out the big guns and tweeted what obama didn't even say he wrote i guess i'm the forty seven percent and in fact big bird was quite a hit on the social media stream last night the twitter government account revealed the phrase big bird had generated about seventeen thousand tweets per minute so much for any substantial debate on the direction of this country which brings me to

my favorite tweet of the night by our t's own web producer andrew blake a pretty much summed it up really well he said christ i was born he's this my thoughts exactly so let's break the set. i i i i i all right so the debates well it seems like everything had something to say about it watching the corporate news channels is actually pretty funny here's a few reactions. of those uncommitted voters right we polled right after the debates tonight the results were quite convincing for governor romney it was no question that the republicans were like. they were they were language the guy got back in this thing tonight you know the democrats were on the defensive in the present should watch him ascend b.c. by last point he will learn something every night on this show the last one of chris matthews here that was my favorite yes chris we get it you're

a smart guy and this and you see it could do no wrong and obama should be asking you for advice on how to win a debate and that's all was you know i said it pretty late last night and all i heard was obama won no romney won no it was a tie god give me a break all right the tip my hat to one pundit the man himself the inventor of the internet mr al gore is take on why obama didn't perform his best. go to five thousand feet exactly and you only have a few hours to adjust and it's interesting i don't know maybe you can do you know what i did but of course denver the mile high city mr gore that is a solid a theory as i've ever heard but seriously it does bother me that the people are still debating who won an argument between two millionaire shills that are going about virtually nothing in their policies are not that different were the questions about civil liberties women's rights or the use of domestic drones in this country

no instead we got a lot of this. comes through our text governor romney and i both agree that our corporate tax rate is to on energy governor romney and i we both agree that we've got to boost american energy production. first education i agree education is key second area taxation we agree we have to bring the text rates down and they do have you agree that the voters have a choice a care choice perhaps that is what you i appreciate and it appears we've got some agreement and i agree that but let's come back to something the president i agree on one of the things i suspect governor romney and i probably agree on is i agree i agree i agree i agree and i love your tie i mean seriously the only thing missing there was both of them to french kiss at the end these debates were not only boring as hell they also sucked and you want to know why because not only were the arguments incredibly superficial but the spend machines that start up on the corporate media channels as soon as the baits are over served as the biggest distraction from

a daunting reality that these two men have almost everything in common when it comes down to some of those important issues that affect people not only in this country but around the world where are the pundits when it came to discussing obama's top wall street donors like goldman sachs that gave him one million dollars last time around or now the other wall street donors that supported obama in two thousand and eight like bank of america morgan stanley and citi group are all of romney's top donors this time around but obama saying that we should all reform wall street hello david where the hell of you've been you're the one who let the collapse those who collapse the economy walk away with millions of dollars in bonuses why is it not part of the debate that both candidates are funded by the same banks and lobbyists could it be that this is just one more thing narrowing the similarities between the candidates folks come november will be faced with a false choice painted by both sides of the corporate media has a clear distinction are you not convinced yet. let's go over this again both

candidates the port unmanned aerial drone warfare and also support targeted assassinations of alleged terror suspects both have extremely close ties with the g.m.o. giant months santo you know the corporation trying to take over the global food industry both want to bomb bomb bomb bomb iran after four years in office obama has not made any headway in closing a little legal torture house known as guantanamo and romney has said that we ought to double it both candidates the pork the exportation of torture whether through the use of solitary confinement of whistleblowers in this country or extraordinary rendition abroad both adamantly support the growing surveillance state and the erosion of our civil liberties through things like the patriot act and warrantless wiretapping both candidates are dead set on the continuation of the failed drug war that's resulted in thousands of lives lost abroad and the crackdown on states' rights here at home both support overturning one of the most fundamental civil liberties of all due process through the national defense authorization act you

know it's not really surprising that these things don't get talked about because both candidates although they differ in my new show regarding domestic issues they both subscribe to the fundamental policies that are destroying this country that talks of fine corrupt policies supporting the military machine justifying endless warfare that squanders millions of dollars that could be used for programs of social uplift in this country. now as mind numbingly boring as these debates were over sixty million people still watch them from anchors and talking heads all the way down to the folks on twitter and facebook everyone had an opinion on who won but who funded the debates and what are the voters actually learn here to break all this down and more i'm joined by chris chambers professor at the critical meeting studies at georgetown university chris thank you so much for going on so you know what i was hunching the big romney with his red tie obama with the blue tile is absurd the lapel the flag lapel pin they got to wear the flag with. yeah yeah shiny

new dark suit i mean the whole set i just felt like you know first we had these conventions billions of dollars for a dog and pony show now we have these debates it just felt like i was watching it when it's what the roman emperors used to call bread and circus so you know i had tweeted late last night that it was interesting to see barack obama channel his inner wonky nerd and romney channel his inner used car salesman and i didn't think anybody was retreating i woke up this morning i mean there was like a million people had picked that up and i was just trying to be facetious but apparently this was a metaphor for allegory for what was going on you know on a number of different levels when you drill down this was very very just not only bizarre but also complicated because you saw the weaknesses of both of these men really played out i mean barack obama not even not even able to address what were very likely i mean and i will say this in the in the democrats' column a lot of

checklist law over mitt romney and then mitt romney however you know pulling back into a moderate stance than pushing forward you know dumping the tea party and then jumping in i mean it was it was a joke it was almost like a choreographed circus with obama as the straight man vaudeville and so i couldn't you know i didn't understand what was going on and again you were right you don't hear about any of the civil liberties things. anything about women's issues civil rights anything along those lines just cursory talking about the environment. and anything with digital privacy you know anything along those lines about what the internet can and cannot do and who can regulate it that wasn't important and you didn't even you know of course you didn't have joel stein or gary johnson there so none of that could tug in that direction yeah absolutely it really did seem like these two empty suits sitting up there going taxes deficit wise taxes deficit. exchange exchange exchange but let's talk about the third party candidates i mean

when they're excluded from these debates i mean we have this commission that funds the presidential race right now that they're funded and part by the coal industry i mean how does that influence it's that again is allegory for how the corporate media in this country works i mean theoretically a long time ago was the league of women voters you know the quintessential old and good old days right old line and obviously we're going to there's like people's moms. now it's the it's just commission on presidential debates that's ridiculous and that is also allegory for how corporate media has soaked in you know all this influence for many sides of me to be fair from from the progressive side a lot of other organizations trying to tug at that but i mean really it's money and it's moneyed interests and you see it played out here i mean you know if obama wanted to make a difference you could talk about firing eric holder to. but he's not going to do that right you know mitt romney would come clean on a whole hell of

a lot of things but he's not going to do that well so easy for the person running against an incumbent president to say this is all the things are going wrong i mean of course all the policies they're setting for completely got the economy yes. but obama really was weak on his defense it's almost like you can't really defend such help boswell is an actor i mean i think he would have come off better head you had joel stein and gary johnson there not because you might have this libertarian. that might target at romney i think it would have given obama time to really focus on what you know what he's doing as president and present that and attack romney on these laws because what because stein and johnston probably would be a good running interference basically like in a football field would probably hit romney one of them is going to hear some real dialogue because we didn't hear any of that last night but i wanted to talk to you about the guy who moderates that debate jim lehrer you know here he is i mean to me i mean i for watching and we're just like i would love to see chris hedges moderate this debate i mean if. they don't you want to see some really hard questions these

people need to deal with that i want this guy just appeasing them feeling that you know. it was i mean i was watching the debate at the press club and i left and tried to zoom down to georgetown as fast as possible but some of people i was watching the stuff were like jim lehrer's friends yeah you could even see them wincing i'm not going to i'm not going to go as far as obama operatives and say that jim lehrer was the reason the president should look good right i mean even the poynter institute which is the you know sign is sure of all things journalistic and could continue again and said he did a terrible job and for the end of the president on a lot of off the hook for that you have to prepare for these things so you have to prepare for a crappy moderator really person is going to win here or the people the writers at saturday night live because god knows the guy who plays jim lehrer is going to be the butt of the jokes on saturday you know but that's pretty much it i mean and the

twitter sphere basically yeah let's talk about the lies of omission i think we mentioned that before but i mean really you know when you hear these people agree much in the moderator is just kind of pandering to that other than the fact that it is an obvious dog and pony show i mean it really they'd left out some really crucial issues that do affect so many people and even issues that obama could have won easily with like women's rights you know get it right i mean what why do you think that those. because there are there horrors and you know we don't want to hear their demise and we don't want that i mean and mitt romney has a definite advantage when i said he had an advantage going into this is that he's got even the people that hated him and thought that rick santorum should be president he's got them so ginned up and you know the pacs and everything that you know he could basically he could have shown up naked they're still going to vote for him so he had the ability to zigzag sketch whatever you want to call it and he could avoid those issues because they were you know it's like jerry maguire you had

me at hello he's got them now so he could basically get up and talk about it if you can see one of the talk about gay marriage based not going to the president certainly doesn't want to touch that doesn't want to touch women's issues doesn't want to touch abortion this was supposed to be but domestic issues and these were hot button issues that were not touched and so all they did was talk about kind of these new ones tax you know very incremental like things that is really hard for people to digest really when he's very harsh in it very hard thank you so much for coming on and having on chris. now if you like what you see so far go to our youtube channel at youtube dot com and subscribe check out our facebook page at facebook dot com slash breaking the set and i know the nature of the internet is that hate is going to hate and trolls going to troll if you're more intelligent than a troll feel free to write me and let me know what you think and if you're wondering about what i'm doing or bitching about when i'm not on air follow me on twitter and abby martin and i take a break from my preaching for now but stay tuned to hear about romney's coke

meaning koch brothers problem next.

mr. seems like presidential candidate mitt romney has a bit of a coke problem and no not the illicit drug cocaine but rather the koch brother although you think i was talking about the drug considering how addicted the g.o.p. candidate is to them now.

now before i get ahead of myself i don't if you don't know who the koch brothers are well you might not but considering that they have their tentacles in almost every major republican campaign you probably should the koch brothers are oil billionaires david and charles koch who run koch industries the second largest private phone company in the united states and they pull in over one hundred billion dollars annually now being that the election is just a month away they're quite busy these days hosting fifty thousand dollars a plate gala luncheons for their millionaire buddies romney and ryan this past july the sparrow project played a role in court in an action targeting a romney two thousand and twelve campaign fundraiser at the south hampton home of billionaire david koch about two hundred activists came out in protest of the pervasive role of koch money on policy making. the corners of the sparrow project had no idea that their action to bring attention to the issue would result any huge smear campaign from the koch brothers p r arm the smear tactics madonna not only

attempt to call into question the organizers credibility it would seek to bully the journalist simply for reporting the truth hear talk more about this and the effect citizens united is having on campaign finance in the elections i'm joined by andy. a core organizer of the july protest and co-founder of sparrow media dot net andy thank you so much for coming on things you have to me so before we get into the koch brothers protests and everything that happened afterward talk a little bit about what the sparrow project is well the sparrow project is a p.r. agency that myself and the few friends of mine put together essentially filling a vacancy that activists needed when they needed p.r. representation major corporations and politicians have access to p.r. because of the money that they have most grassroots activist groups don't have that kind of money and so what we set out to do is we decided to bring together people that have p.r. experience and marketing experience and then lend those talents to activist groups

that have great logical causes that we want to fight for and we help deliver their message the mainstream media and also subversive media to try and extend their reach ok so you have a successful protest in july you flew a banner that said romney has a coke problem and what happened at the protest and and afterward. but the protest was entirely peaceful surprisingly enough in the early morning that they we set out to the hamptons we actually were approached by secret service and department of homeland security they approached some of our organizers and they had a meeting with the local mayor to try to make things go as smoothly as possible and you know kudos to them they actually made sure that we had a space to protest there was a decent spot where the media had access to us and a decent spot where romney was forced to drive past us to at least see us the koch brothers would have to see us people like herman cain would have to see sheldon adelson individuals like bob perry from perry homes had to see us so our you know

our visual aspect we got what we needed and then then after that we actually marched down the beach about a mile and a half in total to get to go directly behind the home of david koch we stayed within the distance between the actual water line and the high tide mark because that's considered public domain there and while they're having this giant gala we actually were be able to project their voices into the backyard they were forced to listen to us the entire time while they're eating dinner so i thought was a fairly effective protest it got a lot of media coverage it got a lot of mainstream media coverage in places that we don't usually expect like c.n.n. and the new york times actually ran seven different articles on it was exceptionally effective and the fallout though was something that was unique and that was that the koch brothers decided to go on a p.r. attack against myself and my friends within the project for our organizing efforts and so those koch brothers p.r. guy rob tappan i think it was actually wrote you off as a convicted terrorist that should be investigated i mean wow talk about this

campaign against you well first of it it's important to take two things into consideration the first is that rob tappan was tapped no pun intended by blackwater in two thousand and seven when they would be leader after all the scandals coming out of iraq and so he was tapped at the time he was working for a person marcello which the p.r.i. . outside of d.c. and he was tapped for the reasons of trying to take that company and essentially brand it and so when he came up with this he came up with an idea of taking the company blackwater and then rebranding it as z. so that it was just so ambiguous so vague that people kind of forget what it is only do we have this to thank for that that's good to know yeah and so this guy is the guy that now gets tapped by koch industries he's now working for coke sacks dot com which is the the public office of koch industries and his job is to kind of tailor the message and attack people that are coming after him so his focus right now is on robert greenwald for the film that he's producing his focus is on the new

york times is focuses on and this n.b.c. and then to a lesser extent people like myself you know actually going after them and attacking them and what's so unique about it is that it's particularly bullish and it's particularly unprofessional now in my case i was convicted of nuanced overbroad terrorism statute that in two thousand and six called the animal enterprise terrorism that at the time the animal rights protection act and so he utilized this to essentially smear all the activists that were in attendance and to speak up on behalf of all the activists that were in attendance i was but one individual those present at the protest volunteered to help coordinate draft and distribute the press release but in terms of everything else that happened there were hundreds of individuals that helped make that action happen and dozens of core individuals that helped organize and credit is due to all those different people all those different groups groups ranging from occupy wall street to move on dot org to occupy the east and to the occupy a storefront or smaller groups that all fit in and found a place progressive coalition various mainstream groups participated so to go after

this entire protest movement and then blame me as being the sole person responsible and try to slander all the other protesters because of my alleged past bad acts is not only irresponsible but it's inaccurate and let's talk a little bit about the animal enterprise terrorism act i mean that in itself is such an outrageous piece of legislation it basically deem. animal rights activists as terrorists in a really overly generalized way i mean talk about this bill i don't think a lot of people even know that it exists while i was convicted under the predecessor law which was drafted in one thousand nine hundred two called the animal enterprise protection act shortly after i was convicted in november of two thousand and six they upped the law to call it the animal enterprise terrorism act and it has increased sentencing enhanced mintz essentially what it says that if you create a physical disruption to the revenue or if you create an economic disruption to a business that utilizes animals for profit then you could be charged as a terrorist in this country there's other nuanced laws being written like it that

have to do with environmental activism and other types of human rights activism and we really need to be on the watch right now because this type of model legislation is being drafted by another koch affiliate organization called the american legislative exchange council they helped to pen this bill in one thousand nine hundred two this is this group's been around for almost forty years now. and they helped to pen this bill back then and right now what they're doing which is the most egregious we have to actually do with whistleblowers is some of the stuff that you talk about is they're drafting bills called agag bills and ag gag bills are bills in individual states that prohibit the use of undercover video footage in factory farms that document abuse it says that if you're partake in being involved in undercover investigation you could be charged either with a felony or crimes tantamount to terrorism in that state and that's something that's been lobbied for by you know agribusiness and they utilize alec the american legislative exchange council as a middle agency to help them write this draft legislation and then they push it

through local legislators and so that's a huge problem in my exchange with koch industries we had a kind of back and forth on the internet and this is all you know available to read on sparrow media dot net they proudly said that they've been a member of coke they've been a member of alec since almost the beginning so that's of about forty years now that koch industries have been working without. to draft model legislation that behooves the interest of l o yeah and i'm really happy about it alec i mean the koch brothers have been on their corporate advisory board for forty years like you said i mean the stand your ground laws the corporate person and i mean all of the ag gag laws it's an insane issue and it's really shocking how much influence the sphere of influence alec really has over our government here and the but i wanted we're almost out of time i just wanted to ask you you know i know that a lot of people know really the extent of influence of the koch brothers have and what they have helped draft i mean talk about what else they have helped other than of course citizens united the most egregious of all bills that grants corporate

personhood what else have the koch brothers had an influence in passing well citizens united kind of exists autonomous leave from the koch brothers in that this is united production company tried to you essentially bring this lawsuit against the f.e.c. and they won but when they approached the supreme court there are ways that you could file supporting briefs that will then support that and so there's there's a term called curated briefs which is a friend of the court brief that could be filed by any type of agency a nonprofit a legal group etc etc and two cokes funded organizations wrote their own on the cure a breeze they employed almost twenty one attorneys to write these briefs in support of citizens united and yet they go on record in front of the press saying that they have nothing to do with the citizens united ruling moreover if you look at their donor summits that they hold these very secretive private donors summits both both justices thomas and scalia have attended these donor summits now you have two members of the supreme court that are attending their donors summits and i know

it's conjecture but imma leave it up to your viewers decide whether or not when they attend a massive donor summit like this if it has an influence on them or not. it is a very good question thank you so much for coming on breaking our fortune at a time when sparrow project thanks dad and thank you so we are in slavery by a system that we ourselves created money these days money not only makes the world go around. but more disturbingly it's completely hijacked our right to free and fair elections the right to govern ourselves based on integrity and morality corporations now control our politicians they buy the influence they even own the voting machines for god's sakes so politicians maybe puppa teared by their corporate paymasters but ultimately it's up to us to see the writing on the wall to pull back the curtain and stand up to the system of financial bribery looting and intimidation and yes money does have an enormous influence over our lives that allows the establishment to push their agenda to tappan your innermost vulnerabilities and it tell you what you should care about and how you should act

but even though they can buy the message they can't buy our voice and more importantly they can't buy our minds.

the dow chemical company in midland michigan. seventy two million liters of defoliant.